S.F. women's rights advocate accused of raping wife

Updated 7:37 am, Saturday, April 12, 2014

(04-11) 20:28 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- While attorneys for a women's rights advocate and prominent Twitter engineer accused of raping her estranged wife say the accuser is "out for revenge," a friend who says she was present after the incident said Friday that the wife just wants to teach her children that criminals must face justice.

Dana McCallum, 31, was arrested Jan. 26 on suspicion of rape. She was charged a few days later with five felonies: three counts of spousal rape, one count of false imprisonment and one count of domestic violence, according to the San Francisco district attorney's office.

McCallum, whose legal name is Dana Contreras, had been separated from her wife for about a year but maintained a polite, and at times sexual, relationship with her, authorities said.

She went over to her wife's two-bedroom home in San Francisco the morning of Jan. 26 while she was highly intoxicated, according to Erin Caton, a friend of the wife's. Her three children and one of their friends had let McCallum in without realizing she was drunk, Caton said, so the wife steered her into another room, where McCallum allegedly attacked her.

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The Chronicle is not naming the accuser because she is the victim in a sexual assault case.

John Runfola, McCallum's attorney, said there's no evidence of an attack because nothing happened. His client is "outraged" over the allegations, he said.

"This is just all about destroying a person publicly and trying to grab hundreds of thousands dollars, or perhaps more, all by making these false accusations," he said.

Runfola said McCallum was about to come into money through her Twitter stock options, and her wife knew about this and wanted to take advantage.

He said if the accusations had merit, the children who were in the next room would have heard more than they had.

"One daughter, who said she had her ear up against the door, claims to have heard the word 'no' once," he said. "No screaming, just some crying."

Caton said the daughter heard much more than that and that it was "ridiculous" for Runfola to say otherwise.

"When she came out of the room, she said she saw her daughter curled up in a fetal ball, crying at the foot of the door," Caton said.

In addition to her job at Twitter, McCallum writes about women in technology and advocates for women's and transgender rights. A month before the arrest, she was listed as one of the most important LGBT people in tech by Business Insider.